Neorxnawang (also Neorxenawang and Neorxnawong) is an

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

noun used to translate the

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

concept of

paradise In religion and folklore, paradise is a place of everlasting happiness, delight, and bliss. Paradisiacal notions are often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical, eschatological, or both, often contrasted with the miseries of human ...

Anglo-Saxon literature Old English literature refers to poetry (alliterative verse) and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th- ...

.Simek (2007:229). Scholars propose that the noun originally derives from

Germanic mythology Germanic mythology consists of the body of myths native to the Germanic peoples, including Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon paganism#Mythology, Anglo-Saxon mythology, and Continental Germanic mythology. It was a key element of Germanic paganism. O ...

, referring to a "heavenly meadow" or place without toil or worries.Jeep (2001:554).

Etymology

While the second half of the word, -''wang'', is widely acknowledged to mean 'field' (and its cognate ''waggs'' appears for 'paradise' in Gothic), scholars have yet to reach an agreement regarding the first element's meaning – though at least a dozen attempts to interpret it have been made. Scholar

Rudolf Simek Rudolf Simek (born 21 February 1954) is an Austrian philologist and religious studies scholar who is Professor and Chair of Ancient German and Nordic Studies at the University of Bonn. Simek specializes in Germanic studies, and is the author ...

states that it is possible to consider the term as a

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...

term for '

Asgard In Nordic mythology, Asgard (Old Norse: ''Ásgarðr''; "Garden of the Æsir") is a location associated with the gods. It appears in several Old Norse sagas and mythological texts, including the Eddas, however it has also been suggested to be refe ...

' or 'Other World' due to the noun's unclear meaning, that Christian authors who used it seemed to have a poor understanding of it as well, and that it corresponds with the North Germanic terms ''

Iðavöllr Iðavöllr (Old Norse Iðavǫllr, possibly "splendour-plain"Orchard (1997:95).) is a location referenced twice in ''Völuspá'', the first poem in the ''Poetic Edda'', as a meeting place of the gods. Attestations In a stanza early in the poem ''V ...

'' (possibly 'field of activity' or 'the continually renewing, rejuvenating field') and ''

Glæsisvellir Glæsisvellir (Glittering Plains) was a location in Jotunheim in Norse mythology. It is mentioned in sources such as '' Bósa saga ok Herrauds'', '' Hervarar saga'', ''Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns'' and '' Helga þáttr Þórissonar''. Legend I ...

'' ('the shining fields'). 19th century scholar

Jacob Grimm Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He formulated Grimm's law of linguistics, and was the co-author of the ''Deutsch ...

observes that etymological connections have been proposed between '' Norn'' and ''Neorxnawang'', but says that the theory raises etymological issues and other problems: "The A. gen. pl. neorxana, which only occurs in 'neorxena wong' = paradisus, has been proposed, but the abbreviation would be something unheard of, and even the nom. sing. neorxe or neorxu at variance with norn; besides, the

Parcae In Religion in ancient Rome, ancient Roman religion and Roman mythology, myth, the Parcae (singular, Parca) were the female personifications of destiny who directed the lives (and deaths) of humans and gods. They are often called the Fates in En ...

are nowhere found connected with paradise."Grimm (1882:405). Late 19th and early 20th century philologist James Bright proposes that ''neorxena-'' derives from the phrase ''ne wyrcan'', meaning 'no working'.Bright (1913:334). In a 1979 article, Alan K. Brown proposes that ''neorxena-'' is an artificial distortion of OE ''grœ̄ne'' (alternative form of ''grēne'') 'green' using then in-vogue 8th century literary tricks of reverse spelling and isolated rune use, in this case the Elder Fuþark and the Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc rune ᚷ (Proto-Germanic ''*gebu'', Old English ''ġifu'') 'gift', to mark the end & beginning of said reversal stemming from the left-to-right-or-right-to-left freedom of runic writing, suggesting an original *G''rœ̄n(e)nawang'', meaning 'green field'. He then suggests an entirely Christian origin of the term rather than a pre-Christian one, stating "Cryptic names for Paradise, and its interpretation with 'green,' are found in early Insular Latin." and points to the

Old Saxon Old Saxon (), also known as Old Low German (), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Eur ...

Heliand The ''Heliand'' () is an epic alliterative verse poem in Old Saxon, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means "savior" in Old Saxon (cf. German and Dutch ''Heiland'' meaning "savior"), and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase ...

using the term grôni uuang''' as a noteworthy kenning for Paradise, and similar phrases in Genesis A and Guthlac A to suggest the term originally being created simply as a semantic loan of Latin ''Paradisus''. In a 1985 paper, Jane Roberts expounds her interpretation of ''nēo-rixena'' as "corpse- rushes".Roberts, J., A Preliminary "Heaven" Index for Old English 16(1985),208-19. In a 2012 paper, Joseph S. Hopkins and Haukur Þorgeirsson propose a connection between Old Norse ''

Fólkvangr In Norse mythology, Fólkvangr (Old Norse "field of the host"Orchard (1997:45). or "people-field" or "army-field"Lindow (2001:118).) is a meadow or Field (agriculture), field ruled over by the goddess Freyja where half of those that die in comba ...

'', an afterlife location overseen by the goddess

Freyja In Norse mythology, Freyja (Old Norse "(the) Lady") is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, and seiðr (magic for seeing and influencing the future). Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a char ...

, and a variety of other Germanic words referring to the afterlife that contain extensions of Proto-Germanic *''wangaz'' (including Old English ''Neorxnawang'' and Gothic ''waggs''), potentially stemming from a concept of a *wangaz'' of the dead' in Proto-Germanic mythology.Hopkins and Haukur (2012:14-17).

Notes

References

* Bright, James Wilson. 1913. ''An Anglo-Saxon Reader''.

Henry Holt and Company Henry Holt and Company is an American book-publishing company based in New York City. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt (publisher), Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. The company publishes in ...

. * Grimm, Jacob. 1882. James Steven Stallybrass trans. '' Teutonic Mythology: Translated from the Fourth Edition with Notes and Appendix'' Vol. I. London: George Bell and Sons. * Hopkins, Joseph S. and Haukur Þorgeirsson. 2012.
The Ship in the Field
. ''

RMN Newsletter ''RMN Newsletter'' is a peer-reviewed and open access academic journal published on a bi-annual basis by the University of Helsinki’s Department of Folklore Studies. Published in both digital and print editions, ''RMN Newsletter'' covers topics r ...

'' 3, 2011:14-18.

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

. * Jeep, John. 2005. ''Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia''.

Routledge Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...

. * McKinnell, John. 2005. ''Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend''. D.S. Brewer * Roberts, J. 1985.
A Preliminary "Heaven" Index for Old English
.

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

. * Simek, Rudolf. 2007. Angela Hall trans. ''Dictionary of Northern Mythology''. D.S. Brewer. {{heaven, hide=yes Anglo-Saxon paganism Conceptions of heaven Places in Germanic mythology Old English

Etymology

See also

Notes

References